Monday, November 28, 2011

For Sale

Mexico has for years been known as a den of iniquity. It is a fact. What ever deviant behavior the human mind is capable of dreaming up the Mexicans will find a way to provide it. As the drug dealer and pimp to the United States and Canada, Mexico’s President Calderon along with political partners in crime have a vested interest in keeping the their northern border as porous as passable. It is not enough for the Mexican government to want the proceeds form illicit drugs but a cut of the sex trade as well.

The Mexican sex trade is well established and condoned by political leaders and police officials on the local and federal level. Like anywhere else in the world “money talks and bullshit walks” and in Mexico the American dollar is screaming these days. With the downturn in the American economy Mexico has been hit hard financially. The resulting loss of jobs and small business closing has left many illegal Mexicans out of work thus curtailing the flow of dollars back to Mexico. The illegal Mexican workers travel in packs and live like animals with far to many crammed into a house or apartment they routinely violate occupancy levels thus creating a fire hazard and overloading the sewage and electrical systems. In May of 2010 President Calderon addressed a joint session of congress. During that speech Calderon received his longest round of applause when he spoke in Spanish, addressing Mexican migrants in the U.S. and telling them that Mexico admires them, misses them, and is fighting hard for their rights and their families.Calderon also won sustained applause when he said, "I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona. It is a law that not only ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree, but also introduced a terrible idea using racial profiling for law enforcement."HOLY MEXICAN JUMPIN BEEN BATMAN what did he say and he received a standing “O” from Congress for saying it. I can understand a president sticking up for his people and his country but comments like that are best said in private not in public and certainly not meant for a joint session of congress that is recorded and played live for the entire population of the U.S. and Mexico. This is total buffoonery. What Calderon failed to mention is that thousands of young Mexican and Central American girls are sold, resold and smuggled into the US and Canada for sexual exploitation. The scumbags willing to pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege of screwing up a young girls life rarely if ever get apprehended and punished. Calderon also neglected to mention that Mexico is the largest source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced prostitution and forced labor. Government and NGO statistics suggest that the magnitude of forced labor surpasses that of forced prostitution in Mexico. Groups considered most vulnerable to human trafficking in Mexico include women, children, indigenous persons, and undocumented migrants. Mexican women, girls, and boys are subjected to sexual servitude within the United States and Mexico, lured by false job offers from poor rural regions to urban, border, and tourist areas. Mexican trafficking victims were also subjected to conditions of forced labor in domestic servitude, street begging, and construction in both the United States and Mexico. In one case, 107 trafficking victims, both Mexican and foreign citizens, were freed from a factory disguised as a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico City; many of them had been kidnapped, and all were subjected to forced labor.

The vast majority of foreign victims in forced labor and sexual servitude in Mexico are from Central America, particularly Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; many transit Mexico en route to the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada and Western Europe. However, trafficking victims from South America, the Caribbean,Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa are also found in Mexico, and some transit the country en route to the United States. Unaccompanied Central American minors, traveling through Mexico to meet family members in the United States, fall victim to human traffickers, particularly near the Guatemalan border. Mexican men and boys from Southern Mexico are found in conditions of forced labor in Northern Mexico, and Central Americans, especially Guatemalans, are subjected to forced labor in southern Mexico, particularly in agriculture. Child sex tourism continues to grow in Mexico, especially in tourist areas such as Acapulco and Cancun, and northern border cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez. Most child sex tourists are from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, although some are Mexican citizens. In addition to Mexican drug cartels, organized crime networks from around the world are reportedly involved in human trafficking in Mexico.The Government of Mexico does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking Mexican authorities claim to have increased anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts but the magnitude of the trafficking problem is ever expanding. The number of human trafficking investigations and convictions remains low. While Mexican officials recognize human trafficking as a serious problem, NGOs and government representatives report that some local officials tolerate and are sometimes complicit in trafficking, impeding implementation of anti-trafficking statues. Take the town of Tenancingo for example it looks like any other small Mexican city. Situated partway between Mexico City and Veracruz. Tenancingo is full of extended families and children. But Tenancingo has a secret industry which is both hidden and known by many — the forced prostitution of women which has kept the town alive for three generations. Here's how one Mexican town became a petri dish for sex trafficking.Tenancingo has thrived as a center for sex trafficking for so many years because of several factors which have come together to help forced prostitution flourish. First, TenancingoTenancingo are also mostly Indians, and indigenous people are often more vulnerable to human trafficking than others because of the additional social and economic oppressions they face. Tenancingo (like many other towns in Mexico) also has cultural traditions of "machismo," bride kidnapping, and forced marriage, and other gender-unequal customs. These traditions have grown into an "understanding" among men that they allow each other to subjugate women without interference.Another reason sex trafficking thrives in Tenancingo is the complete lack of desire to address the issue by local authorities. According to town council member Maximino Ramirez, "In this day and age, in the 21st century, are you going to tell me that a woman of 18 or 20 can be tricked? Maybe they went into (prostitution) of their own free will, and then after a while, they say: You know what? They forced me to." The attitude that adult women can't be forced, coerced, or tricked into prostitution means that local law enforcement won't recognize trafficking victims and won't even be looking for them in the first place. But even with a large number of vulnerable women, a culture of misogyny and silence, and a lack of acknowledgment from local authorities, sex trafficking wouldn't exist in Tenancingo if there was no money to be made in it. But there is money to be made, because a couple hundred miles away in Mexico City, there's a large market of men wanting to pay for sex. And a little farther away across the U.S. border, there are even more. For one victim from Tenancingo, that number was 40-50 men a night buying her in America. Sex trafficking is so profitable in Tenancingo, that at least one anthropologist estimates that almost a third of the town is involved in the trade at some level.Tenancingo is a great example of what happens when factors like poverty, inequality, and a "good old boy" mentality come together. But the market for sex trafficking victims is ultimately what drives the pimps of Tenancingo. And the rest of the pimps in the world.